Tuesday, April 30, 2013

O God, you are the God of justice and
forbearance,and we thank you for your manifold blessings.Help us to be
ever-vigilantwhere injustice and manipulation attempt to flourish,and root
them out as noxious weeds.Open our eyesto the plight of the vulnerable in our
midstand then take action to guard and protect them.Watch over the judges in
our landsand help them to interpret the lawwith equity and principle.And
strengthen, guard, and comfort, we pray, these your children.Amen.

Monday, April 29, 2013

O Merciful, Beneficent God, our praise and
prayers arise to You like the spring song of birds.Our hearts seek to proclaim
Your greatness through our words and deeds.Our hands are at the ready, seeking
to make visible your commandments. Our task is to do our utmost to do your will
to love and help each other, and we take it up with a song on our lips.Guide us
in wisdom, strengthen us in courage and watch over these for whom we now pray.Amen.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

O Source of all wisdom, we praise you for this
day. We thank you for this chance to pray together, for we know that you are in
our midst. May we be drawn together in love and faithfulness so that we may be
a credit to your Name. May we nurture your word in our hearts, the true
sanctuary of the Lord. May we answer your call to do your will in all things.
May we attend to your children we meet today who are in need of help, love,
comfort, or prayer.Amen.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Almighty God, let all peoples praise you! Be
gracious to us and bless us, and make your face to shine upon us. Judge the
peoples with equity and guide the nations of the Earth into pathways of
justice. We praise you for the bounty this good land provides and for the
charge we have to care for it. Inspire in us clean hearts and willing hands to
make light work of all that must be done today. Give your angels charge over
those who labor under heavy burdens.Amen.

Friday, April 26, 2013

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the
first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the
throne saying,

"See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them as their God;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

4he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away."

5And the one who was seated on the throne said,
"See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this,
for these words are trustworthy and true." 6Then he said to me, "It
is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the
thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

One
of my favorite lines is in verse 3: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying
and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." This is
an image we also saw in Isaiah 65.17-25, which we heard and read on Easter Day.

Verse
1 echoes Isaiah 65.17, which was the first verse we heard on Easter Sunday. The
image “new heaven and new earth” also appears in Isaiah 66.22, and 2 Peter 3.13.
The image of a new heaven and new earth reflects the eschatological vision that
there will no longer be a separation between earth and heaven. That is why the
home of God will be among mortals (v. 3). And being mortal will not matter any
more, either, because Death will be no more, either, as well as any source of
sadness or discomfort (v. 4). It is a new creation, reordered as it was in Eden
before the Fall.

Interestingly,
St. Paul also uses this imagery to refer to what changes await those who accept
Christ as their savior. In 2 Corinthians 5.17, Paul explains: “So
if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed
away; see, everything has become new!” We heard this reading six weeks ago on
the 4th Sunday in Lent this year (March 10).

We see another usage of the imagery of
Christ as bridegroom and the Church—described here as the city of God—as the
bride. The implication is that the bridegroom is the protector and head—which
works for many of us as Christians although not for many of us in this day and
age who are wives, and verses like this are sometimes used to counsel wives’
submission to their husbands even today. Nonetheless, we need Christ’s love and
protection, even if we do not pattern our marriages along this same kind of
asymmetrical relationship. Perhaps we should focus on the complementarity of
our relationship with Jesus as being unlike marriage today, since we are by no
means equals with him. A good thing to remember when we try to justify actions
we want to do as being “part of God’s will.”

“The home of God is among mortals…”
verse 3. God is proclaiming that he is with us and proclaiming common cause
with us. This is reminiscent of the Israelites’ time in the wilderness, when
God led them by fire and cloud night and day. The Israelites lived in tents,
--and so did God. In 2 Samuel 7 (also 1 Chronicles 17), King David is thankful
for all that God has blessed him with, and notes the fact that he now has a
fine house of cedar while God still lives in a tent. David has the idea of
building God a house too. But the prophet Nathan receives a vision from God in
which God points out that he has no wish to have a house, or he would have
already asked for one. The time is not right, and David is not the person to
build the Temple. David acknowledges the blessing and mercy God has shown him
and drops the idea. However, David’s son Solomon did build the Temple—he was
the right person at the right time (1 Kings 5 and 2 Chronicles 2).

Now, in the vision in Revelation, the
time is also right for God to live among mortals. But this time there will not
be separate houses—God’s house will be ours as well. “Mi casa es su casa.” We
will abide with God and God abide with us completely. Every tear will be wiped
from every eye, for how can there be any sorrow when justice is established,
when all live in equity, and death and suffering are no more? We are not
passive observers in this holy city—it has been built by our faithfulness and
sacrifice during trials and ordeals, as we were reminded last week. May we be
inspired by John’s vision here to work for its establishment here and now.
Revelations provides us here with an image of renewal and transformation of us
and of all creation, of perfection through the true worship of God through
love.

The gift of “water of life” is an image
that appears four times in Revelation, in our reading today and at 7.17 —

for
the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’

22.1-2 —

then
the angel* showed me the river of the water of life,
bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the
middle of the street of the city. On either side of
the river is the tree of life*
with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves
of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

and 22.17 —

The
Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

This concept was alluded to in Isaiah
55.1, which is subtitled “An invitation to abundant life”:

Ho,
everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!

and also in the phrase “living water”
in John 4.13-15, in the discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well:

Jesus
said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but
those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The
water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him,
‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming
here to draw water.’

and in John 7.37-38

On
the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he
cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes
in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow
rivers of living water.”’

Living water is flowing water in desert
climates, which makes it safer to drink. Living water is also freshwater—notice
in verse 1 the sea had passed away and frankly is not missed, since it is not
fit to drink and is often described as the home of sea monsters (see today’s
psalm), separation, the place of storms, and chaos. But metaphorically, living
water is connected with faith and belief which we drink in. Humans need both
food and water: even in comfortable circumstances, an adult human will live
only a week without water. In desert climates, this time is much shorter. This
is a much shorter time than we can survive without food, the outer limits of
which is generally estimated to be 30-40 days or so if that person is hydrated.Notice this is also the length of time that the Bible says that Jesus is
tempted in the wilderness. In scripture, water is associated with belief in the
verses above. Just as we cannot live without water, we cannot live without
belief in Jesus as the Son of God and Savior.

This perfection is reiterated and
framed by the repetition of God’s declaration of making all things new in
verses 5-6.Creation and re-creation.
Alpha and Omega. Beginning and End. The source of all being and ground of all
reality. Supplier of all we need for real life.